KCR Likely to Attend Winter Session Today

Hyderabad: The Winter Session off the Telangana Assembly is expected to turn up the political heat by quite a few notches with both the Congress and the opposition parties declaring their readiness to take on each other on several issues.

The duration of the session will be decided at a meeting of the legislature’s business advisory council that will have representation from both sides of the aisle. While the primary Opposition party, the BRS, has demanded that the session have at least 15 working days, the BJP has declared that nothing short of a 30-day session will do.

With the primary focus of the session expected to centre around issues related to irrigation projects, and inter-state river water sharing, a lot of interest has been generated with the BRS saying that its president and former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao will attend the session on Monday.

With the Congress demanding answers from the former chief minister, who recently charged the state government with neglecting the Palamuru Rangareddy lift irrigation scheme (PRLIS) and not doing enough for protecting the state’s share Krishna and Godavari river waters, it is expected that bulk of the heavy lifting on this front will be tasked to senior BRS leader and former irrigation minister T. Harish Rao.

The government, on its part, is said to be ready with a detailed presentation on river water sharing issues, irrigation projects including the PRLIS on which Chandrashekar Rao raised questions alleging neglect by the government. The BRS has said that it too should be provided with an opportunity for its own presentation on these subjects but it remains to be seen if it will be allowed to do so as in the past, even when the BRS was in power, the Congress was not allowed to make a counter-presentation on irrigation in the Assembly following one from the then BRS government.

Both the Congress and the BRS are expected to stick to their stated stands of the other side being in the wrong on irrigation related issues, while the BJP which held both sides responsible for the problems, is expected to attack the other two parties on the subject.

While several other subjects, including the expansion of the GHMC area and the Telangana Rising 2047 summit, are expected to be discussed, with the Opposition pressing the government to take up matters related to farmers, and its promises to the people, it remains to be seen how many of them will actually come up for discussion as this will depend on the duration of the session.